RE: COMPLEXITY BIG ISSUE

[David Burdett <david.burdett@commerceone.com>]

David W

We agree.

David Burdett, Commerce One
PS, why do you keep on calling me Chris ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: David RR Webber [mailto:Gnosis_@compuserve.com]
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2000 9:09 AM
To: Christopher Ferris
Cc: David Burdett; [unknown]; [unknown]; Dave Hollander
Subject: Re: COMPLEXITY BIG ISSUE


Message text written by Christopher Ferris
>>
> Right now in Commerce One, we have tools that allow you to translate from
> SOX (our own XML Schema language) to a DTD, Microsoft's XDR or the
current
> draft of the W3C schema so going from one definition language to another
one
> is largely a mechanical exercise.
<

Yeah but!   Try this - convert from SOX to the DTD, and then convert from
DTD back
to SOX.   Didn't work did it!   That's because these are NOT semantic
loseless
exercises.    Actually some would argue there is some semantic gain here - 
at least you can read the DTD <g>.

Seriously though - you've just made a very strong case for the semantic
neutral
side to overlay all the local dialects, and also made a strong case for the
fact
that we need to identify the BUSINESS functional needs here - not just
shuffle things back and forth between schemas syntax without understanding
what business problem is being solved.

DW.